Shaking off their traditional reputation as lovers of peace and quiet, librarians are preparing to take a loud battle for Britain’s libraries to the door of the culture secretary.

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip) is challenging the government over its “failure to carry out their legal duty to the public” and keep branches open. It is urging the government to abide by the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act, which states that the public has a statutory right to a quality public library service, in the wake of cuts to hundreds of library services across the country.

“We’ve had enough. We’ve marked our line in the sand here. The government is behaving as if it doesn’t have a duty of care and they do, under the law. We think it’s time to be clear about what that means,” said Nick Poole, the chief executive of Cilip, after it was announced that more than 100 library branches were shut last year, and as further branches up and down the UK face closure.

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Cilip, which has received legal advice from human rights barrister Eric Metcalfe of Monckton Chambers, say that while the government regularly claims that the provision of this “comprehensive and efficient” service is down to local authorities to determine, this is not the case, and it is the “legal duty” of the culture secretary, John Whittingdale, “to provide clear statutory guidance on the definition of a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ service”.

Libraries, Cilip said, are being put at risk “through a combination of neglect, short-term thinking and the failure of HM government to carry out their legal duty to the public”.

Fife is set to shut 16 libraries, a move described as “disgraceful” by the novelist Val McDermid, while Lancashire council plans to cut its library network from 74to 34. Cilip, however, warned on Thursday that local authorities planning closures could be working against the law, and urged them to hold off making changes until discussions with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) conclude.

Martyn Wade, chair of Cilip’s board, said that the librarian body’s investigations had “highlighted a disturbing lack of legally compliant guidance, in the absence of which many local authorities have taken discretionary decisions about their services which risk flouting the law”.

“Under the law, the secretary of state has a duty to maintain and improve the library service,” said Poole, who will “hold the government to account for these legal duties”, including working with Whittingdale to provide “a clear and meaningful statement” of what a “comprehensive and efficient” library service entails, for local authorities to follow.

Poole hopes to work with the government to define statutory guidance, and then to work with local authorities to deliver it. The guidelines, he believes, should define the “location and convenience” of library branches, book stock, staffing, provision of services and public programming.

“We’re not unrealistic, but this is a matter of priority,” Poole said. “We can’t sleep walk into a situation where we lost 10, 15, 20% of our national library services … we’re not going to allow it to go any further. If it takes three months or three years, we don’t care, we are going to slow the rate of closures we have seen over the last 10 years. If we don’t act now, it will be too late.”

Cilip urged all authorities considering changes to their library services without statutory guidance to put their plans on hold pending the outcome of its discussions with the DCMS. “Changes made to library services without reference to an appropriate statutory guideline may not be lawful, not only under the 1964 act, but also in respect of the requirements of the 2010 Equality Act,” said Poole.

The campaign, which will also see the launch of a petition calling on the government to fulfil their statutory obligations and which has been dubbed My Library By Right by Cilip, was welcomed by Philip Jones, the editor of the Bookseller magazine.

“The government needs to be held to account for its running down of the public library service, and this campaign nails it,” said Jones. “This is a government that has consistently turned its back as library after library has been forced to shut its doors thanks to the funding decisions made by central government, and then rolled out to local councils. Personally, I would go further than Cilip; it’s not just access to libraries that is key, it is access to books, and it is this very necessary and priceless resource that generations have been built on, that the government has placed in jeopardy.”

A spokesperson for the DCMS said: “Libraries are cornerstones of their communities and continue to be a fundamental part of society. Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service and we have powers to ensure they comply with the law. Where individual authorities have failed to meet this duty we will – and have – intervened.”